November 3, 2009

From tears to pure excitement!

It has been quite a week! We thought we were completely in the clear to head to the University Of Iowa Hospital's Infertility Clinic....apparently we were wrong.

On Monday I called my insurance company to ask if all of the referral paperwork had been sent in and approved. They told me that they had received nothing. I didn't panic too much yet, I figured they just were taking a while to get it done. When I went for another appointment on Tuesday I asked Dr. B (my old Dr, who is in the same office as Dr. O, my current infertility Dr.)if she had any idea how long a referral form should take to get sent in. She said she wasn't sure, but she would check on it for me. She did check on it, and what she had to tell me on Wednesday morning wasn't pleasant. She said that in my file it said that Dr. O had denied the referral to Iowa City. Tears began to roll down my cheeks. The only thing that had helped me move on from this cycle, and the fact that it was a complete bust, was that we were able to move onto Iowa City, which had brought renewed hope.

She said she had no idea why it would have been denied. I explained that we were very ready to move on, and that we have a limited amount of insurance money for infertility coverage, and that we needed to move on while we still had some money left. She completely understood and was on our side. She said she would go talk to Dr. O and find out what was going on. (I should mention at this point, that Dr. B was a COMPLETE life saver! She totally went to bat for us! I'm not sure why no one had informed me that it had been denied anyway, so likely I would have showed up to Iowa City with NO COVERAGE... and I can't imagine what a 3 hour appointment would have cost out of pocket!!!).

She called me back later in the day to tell me that the referral nurse at our office had asked Dr. O if he had referred me, he said no, so she denied the claim. Apparently Dr. O's nurse, who we had talked to after the ultrasound showed nothing, and who said she understood if we wanted to move on, we were at the end of the road for treatments at our local office, and she would get Dr. O to sign the papers had NOT done that. So Dr. O had no clue what was going on, and simply denied it. He agreed to approve it now that he knew the situation.

This leads us up to Thursday morning. Dr. O was leaving at noon for a week long conference, so I had to have the referral paperwork approved by NOON! At 10:30 I called and talked to a very rude referral nurse who told me that as far as she knew (she was gone the day before when Dr. B helped straighten it out) Dr. O had denied it, and "unless she heard him say to her face that it was approved, she knew no different". Needless to say I was now steaming. I had 90 minutes to get this nurse straightened out, and a stinking piece of paper signed so that we could go to the specialist. Some more tears were shed, and then I made another phone call to Dr. B. She told me that she would go talk to the referral nurse and Dr. O again. At 2pm I still hadn't heard anything and I was sure it hadn't been approved before he left. I decided for my sanity, and the rest of my co-worker's sanity, I needed to call and get the final verdict.

I called Dr. B and she told me that the paperwork had been signed! Hallelujah, I could hear angels singing I swear! I felt SO relieved! Now we had to wait for the insurance company to approve it, we were told we would know within 24 hours. So I sat alone (Matt was out of state for work) and waited. By Friday afternoon everything had been approved by everyone! We are now officially good to go to the University of Iowa Hospital's Center for Advanced Reproductive Care!!! Yahoo!!!

In 48 hours we will be in our first of 3 appointments in Iowa City, I can hardly contain myself! I am so excited! I have 3 pages of questions ready, a referral form ready, a HUGE file folder of my copied records ready, and tons of other "stuff" I have to bring all set out and ready. Our appointment is from 1:00pm to 4:00pm. We have an appointment with the head nurse, a 2 hour appointment with the head PCOS doctor, and a diagnostic ultrasound to finish off the day.

My hope and dreams are back... I am so hopeful that they have the answers and treatments that we need. Come on Iowa city... make us a baby!!!

**We took some friend's family pictures on Sunday, their pics will be posted this week, I promise they are adorable!**

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

So glad it all got straightened out in the end. What a hassle. I hope you have a great appointment and your hope continues for a great cycle.

Jenn said...

I'm so happy that you got everything done in time! Good luck on Thursday! That's when my appointment is too. I just found out that I am positive for two copies of MTHFR, on top of PCOS. They found all this out after my FIFTH miscarriage... ugh! I was wondering how they have treated both the PCOS and MTHFR. You can either find me on my blog, or e-mail me at lovemarriagecarriage (at) gmail.com

Amber said...

so glad to hear it all got straightened out!

Mindy said...

Ugghh dealing with doctors and insurance stuff is such a headache...as if going through fertility treatment isn't enough! I'm glad that you are excited about moving onto another journey- really praying that this will be a success for you!

Mrs. Hammer said...

That's wonderful news! You must have been incredibly frustrated but it all worked out :) I hope Iowa city has some answers for you.